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Substance Use

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Substance use touches on many facets of public policy, including health and health care, economic issues, criminal justice, and risk behaviors — particularly among youth. Accordingly, RAND conducts drug policy research that addresses a range of concerns, from treatment effectiveness, harm reduction, drug markets and supply, and predictors and consequences to evaluations of programs to prevent youth from using and abusing drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Opioid overdoses were the greatest cause of accidental death in America in 2014. A panel discussion at RAND addressed the epidemic, including societal attitudes toward pain and addiction, poor understanding of the mechanics of addiction itself, economic drivers, legal responses, and treatment approaches.

The 24/7 Sobriety Program requires those arrested for or convicted of alcohol-related offenses to take twice-a-day breathalyzer tests or wear a continuous alcohol monitoring bracelet. Those who fail or skip their tests are immediately subject to swift, certain but modest sanctions—typically a day or two in jail.

Co-occurring psychiatric symptoms and either or both drug dependence or heavy drinking among people with HIV can reduce their quality of life and interfere with treatment adherence; therefore HIV service providers should screen for these conditions and provide appropriate services.

A Maine-based trial of a Restorative Practices Intervention will assess whether a positive youth development program improves developmental outcomes and stems problem behaviors in middle schoolers, and whether the effects persist in high school.

Harmonizing measurement of drug policy indicators, such as prevalence of use, problematic use, and drug enforcement, would help improve cross-national comparisons of how nations deal with illicit drugs.

The Protective Behavioral Strategies for Marijuana scale can assess behaviors in young adults that could help limit negative consequences of marijuana use, which may be useful for intervention and prevention programs.

Analyses of longitudinal data on crime and delinquency need to address individual-level effects to better understand factors like social context that may contribute to their association, and to devise targeted interventions.

This study suggests that the association between process-based measures of care quality and mortality in veterans with co-occurring mental and substance use disorders could be used to improve performance and reduce mortality in this population.

Adolescents who use both marijuana and alcohol are more likely to have poor academic performance and mental health during high school. Marijuana use is predictive of poorer functioning across more areas than alcohol use, and nonwhite youth tend to experience poorer functioning than white youth.

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Researcher Spotlight

Codirector, RAND Drug Policy Research Center

Beau Kilmer is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, where he codirects the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. He is also a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research lies at the intersection of public health and public safety, with a special emphasis on crime…

Senior Behavioral Scientist

Karen Chan Osilla is a senior behavioral scientist and clinical psychologist at the RAND Corporation and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. She has substantial experience in the area of developing, implementing, evaluating, and disseminating in-person and web-based brief…

Drug Policy Research Center (DPRC)

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.